On our social media, we ask our community members to share their stories with us. By sharing these stories, we hope to better connect the community. This week we had the lovely opportunity to learn more about Colleen Baldwin and how autism has impacted her life.

Baldwin of Bethesda, Maryland, was diagnosed with autism at age eight. She grew up in the same house her mother was raised in. Her mother was very familiar with their neighbors and had been relatively active in the community for the majority of her life. Baldwin’s grandmother tutored a neighboring family’s children, the Elliots, while both of the parents worked full time. Mrs. Elliot worked in special education, which soon became an important part of Baldwin’s life.

Both Baldwin and her sister were diagnosed with learning disabilities at young ages. Their neighbor offered to tutor herself and her sister, similar to how Baldwin’s grandmother had done for them. With her help, both girls were able to get into one of the first schools for children with learning disabilities known as Benchmark. Baldwin spent many hours with her neighbor after school to improve her understanding of school subjects and her life skills. One of the things Baldwin recalls Mrs. Elliot teaching both her and her parents was self-advocacy and how to be advocates.

With the knowledge of how to advocate, Baldwin’s family was better able to “keep track of all my documentation and semesterly goals, and frequently introduce my needs to new care team members.” Baldwin noted how she had a rather large care team of her own that consisted of a variety of people, from teachers and aids to a variety of therapists and specialists. With such a large team, Baldwin noticed there was no efficient way for all of the members of her team to communicate and collaborate with one another. She states:

“In the disability community, it is common for each child to have 10+ care team members at once, but currently the parents and child are the only points of contact that connect the entire team. This means that all information has to flow through parents, which is stressful and inefficient for everyone.”

She recalls the difficulty her parents had in keeping both her’s and her sister’s care teams up to date with information and the miscommunications that occurred had negatively affected their learning. Baldwin mentioned how there would be times when her caregivers would give her two different goals to complete simultaneously but they contradict each other, thereby slowing her progress.

With the goal of being like her neighbor, Baldwin was determined to make an impact in the disability community. She met cofounders Olivia Bruno and Mika Panday at American University and later reached out to them to work collaboratively on a startup for the autism community. Together the three neurodivergent women worked for a year and a half to create an app called Platybase. This app, as Baldwin describes, is:

“a HIPAA compliant app that tracks milestones and skill acquisition for children with autism, while simultaneously improving the community. Platybase allows all care team members to communicate in one central place so that parents and children can be better supported. With our product, we can standardize practices across therapies, better track skill acquisition, and share strategies such as home programming to the entire care team.”

As an individual with autism, we asked Baldwin if she could offer some words of encouragement to individuals or families of people with autism. Her words of encouragement to were, “Everyone grows at their own pace, don’t get caught up comparing yourself or your child to neurotypical peers. We all reach different milestones at different times in our lives compared to others and that’s totally okay!” and suggested “record and celebrate every milestone!” When asked to describe her autism, she personally describes her autism as one of a kind.

To learn more about Platybase and their advocacy for those with disabilities, follow them on Linkedin.
Thank you Colleen for sharing your story with us and we wish you and your colleagues the best for the future of Platybase.

Woman Uses Personal Autism Journey to Create App

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